 I'm very pleased to welcome you to today's event on how Europe will respond to the Iran nuclear agreement, an event jointly hosted by the International Crisis Group and the Carnegie Endowment. Thank you very much for coming today. Thank you very much for your interest in a topic which has been discussed considerably over the past weeks in this town, at least, much less so on the European side of the Atlantic, but which I'm sure many of you have attended similar meetings. If not today or even yesterday, we had Senator Harry Reid speak here at Carnegie. We had former Senator Hillary Clinton speak at Brookings this morning. There is a lot of talk about how this Iran deal is seen here in the United States, but also at least some mention of how this is being seen in Europe. My name is Cornelius Adubar. I run the Europe program here at Carnegie. And as I say, I'm very pleased to be working with the ICG on this and to add a perspective to a topic which is genuinely international, genuinely multilateral as the Europeans would like to claim. It is also very topical in the sense to look at Europe's views on the Iran file. It is not only a debate that takes place here in DC. It is, you all know that Europe is preoccupied with other crises at the moment. It has never reached this level of engagement, the debate about Iran in Europe as it has here. There are some comparisons being made to the debate here being similar to the debate about Iran, sorry, about Iraq 12 years ago. And if I then think of Europe, I think of a split that went through Europe at the time and a much more unified political class here in Washington. This time around, it is a little bit different. The split seems to go through the Atlantic where you have a unified Europe, unified in the belief that this deal is a good enough deal and worth being implemented and a lot of debate taking place here in Washington. So we're very pleased to have with us two speakers from Europe today, Jean-Marie Gehenno and Wolfgang Ischinger, who are both accomplished European diplomats, career diplomats for their respective countries. Having reached pinnacles in their career, Jean-Marie Gehenno, he ultimately served for the United Nations, responsible for peacekeeping for over, for about eight years. And Wolfgang Ischinger is known to many as the German ambassador to the United States for a very, yeah, very convulsive period from 2001 to 2006. More interestingly, after their diplomatic careers, they pursued, they went beyond diplomacy, if I can say, Wolfgang Ischinger at the moment is the head of the Munich Security Conference, which is an annual gathering of security policy makers. And Jean-Marie Gehenno is the CEO, the president and CEO of the International Crisis Group. So thank you very much to you both for having come over to present your views on Europe. And at the same time, I'm very pleased to welcome Susan Maloney from Brookings, our next door neighbor. Susan has also had a career in the State Department, where she served on the policy planning staff, and now she's a senior foreign policy fellow at Brookings. We will go about having a discussion here on the podium and then turning to the audience. And the one thing that I would like to start out with and giving the panelists a chance to come in with their views is to enlighten us a little more why this debate has been so uncontroversial, why there hasn't been much of a debate in Europe about this deal, not only because there is a summer break, not only because there are other issues on the agenda, but what is it that makes it so easy for the Europeans to see this deal in a positive light? Jean-Marie, if you wanna start, and then I'll hand over to Wolfgang. Thank you. Well, I think the, first, it's a great pleasure to be here with all friends. You mentioned that Susan was on the policy planning staff, I would add that Wolfgang and myself, we first met when we were both heads of German policy planning staff, planning staff, and the French planning staff. So this goes back. So planning staff is probably the best entry point in nuclear discussions, must be. I think the Europeans are very committed to this deal because for them it is, in a way, the outcome of not just four years of difficult negotiation, but I would say 12 years of engagement, of trying to find a diplomatic way to make sure that Iran will never have nuclear weapons. It all started actually in 2003, and of course, 2003 is not an indifferent date. This was a time when North Korea decided to get out of the non-proliferation treaty. This was, of course, the year of the Iraq War, and there was at the time, there were deep divisions between the US and Europe, between Europeans on the issue, but there was a sense that if a war could be avoided with Iran on the question of weapons of mass destruction, that would be a good thing. And it was interesting at a time when the Europeans were divided on the Iraq War, the three, the UK, Germany, and France united on the idea of engaging diplomatically Iran on the nuclear issue. And that was the start. It didn't produce a result for a variety of reasons. We're not going to go through those 12 years. Ahmadinejad came to power in 2005. The proposals of the Europeans were not fully supported at the time by the US. The Iranians were not prepared to accept some of the demands of the Europeans, a variety of reasons. Anyway, it doesn't work out then. And then in 2006, it moves to the Security Council and it becomes an international issue. And eventually, with the new Iranian administration, we have the negotiation of which we are now seeing the result. What that means, what is behind that, is a sense, I think, among the Europeans that if I may say, they are frontline states in that issue. They are frontline states on the issue of proliferation because they are much closer to the theater where nuclear proliferation could happen in the most dangerous place in the world in the Middle East. They feel much closer. You don't need ICBMs to reach Europe from that part of the world. So there's a deep sense in Europe shared by the E3, but also by the, I would say, the whole 28 members of the European Union that achieving non-proliferation through robust diplomatic agreements is a top priority. Through robust diplomatic agreements. And then I would say just one word about my own country, about France, because in this whole negotiation, France has sometimes been seen, including by the US, as a kind of spoiler that was taking a very tough position on a number of occasions in the negotiation. And that reflected a very fraught history with Iran. I mean, Ayatollah Khomeini left for Tehran from Paris, Burb, but after that, the relations between Iran and France were less than optimal to put it mildly. There were incidents of terrorism. There was really very, I mean, France was after the United States, probably one of the countries that Iran had the most hostility to. So there was certainly no sense of trust between France and Iran. And that explains a lot of the continued pressure throughout the negotiation by France to make sure that the provisions of the agreement would be as tight as possible. So achieve non-proliferation through negotiation, but not as some kind of aspirational goal, but through an agreement that would not be built on trust, but would be built on very robust verification mechanism, and we can go back to that in the discussion. So frontline state on proliferation. And I think the second reason is frontline state vis-a-vis the whole situation in the Middle East. Today, of course, everybody sees the tragedy of the, what I prefer to call actually a refugees crisis than a migrant crisis, because migrants comfortably ignore the fact that most of these people actually refugees. But this enormous crisis that is washing up on the shores and borders of Europe gives a very concrete sense, concrete illustration to the Europeans that indeed the Middle East is a direct security interest of Europe, and that the nuclear Middle East, proliferating Middle East would be a much more dangerous Middle East than Middle East, which is already very dangerous, but at least there's only one nuclear power, Israel. And that brings me to my last point. I think the engagement of the Europeans on this deal is going to be complemented by a strong regional engagement. The French never closed their embassy in Tehran. The Brits have just reopened it. There is now a steady flow of senior European diplomats to Tehran, not to court business in Tehran. The Europeans have made enormous sacrifices in terms of the impact of sanctions in their trade with Iran. I mean, I think the European trade with Iran was something like $32 billion, and it went down to something like $9 billion. So that's not insignificant. The key there is an understanding in Europe that this deal is about non-proliferation, but if it is to produce all its result, now there's a strong need for very engaged diplomatic work because this deal doesn't claim and doesn't actually do anything in terms of changing the regional dynamics of the region. And if the regional dynamics of the region are left unattended, they could eventually destroy the deal. The deal, as you all know, has long time frames, five, eight years for some of the weapons and ballistic missiles related sanctions, 10, 15, 25 years for a number of constraints that are gradually lifted. The real policy question that is not discussed enough, in my view, in this town, is what are we going to do of those 10, 15, 20, 25 years? Are we just focusing on the rigorous implementation of the deal and we should indeed focus on that? But this is not enough. This is necessary, this is not sufficient. And I think you're going to see a lot of diplomatic efforts on the European side and I would hope that this would be done in close coordination and with full support from the US to now work on the regional dimension so that this deal, which we have to be honest, produces a certain nervousness on the part of the Gulf countries, although they are now all supportive of the deal, but indeed the fact that Iran could be reintegrated in the community of nations, although its military forces are technically much weaker than what the Saudis have or even the Emirates and a number of Gulf countries. Nevertheless, Iran is a big country and so we all know that there's a great deal of nervousness in the Gulf on what that means in terms of the influence of Iran in the Gulf and the balance of power in the Gulf. And there there is a real challenge because on the one hand, you do want to make sure that there is a balance of power. I mean, I speak like a sort of traditional, hard-nosed Frenchman there. You do need some kind of traditional balance of power. At the same time, you don't want to trigger a kind of escalation, arms race in the region that could become quite unstable. So you will need to complement reassurance from allies with effective diplomacy to gradually try to build a diplomatic framework for relations in the region. So that's why the Europeans believe that this deal is a foundation that opens the possibility of a different Middle East. It doesn't guarantee in any way a new Middle East and we shouldn't oversell it. We have to recognize that this is a deal about non-proliferation. This is not a deal about a new Middle East, but a Middle East as it is with proliferation is a much more dangerous Middle East than a Middle East with no proliferation. That's what's behind, in my view, the European strong support for the deal. Thank you very much, Jean-Marie. And we will go into more detail what you described as regional initiatives and regional engagement before I want to give the floor to Wolfgang and present his views and maybe a little bit of a German view also, but in general, the European view on the deal so far. Yeah, thank you very much. First of all, let me say I'm delighted to be here with Suzanne, my old friend Jean-Marie at Carnegie. I think this is a historic moment. We have had between Europe and the United States a huge difference as far as Iran is concerned for the last several decades. We, collectively the Europeans, we have found it reasonable and okay to maintain our diplomatic relationships. We've had ambassadors in Tehran, and I've just had a discussion with the Iranian ambassador in Berlin just a couple of weeks ago as a matter of routine. That is significant. You asked Cornelius what's the specific nature of the European or, in my case, the German position. Having had continuous diplomatic relations with Tehran makes it slightly easier for us Europeans to understand that what we have before us is not the case of an unconditional surrender by Iran to a kind of victorious coalition of outside powers. Quite frankly, when I read what some unidentified members of the U.S. Congress and others, former vice presidents, for example, Unnamed, of course. Unnamed, what they have said, I think they assume mistakenly that they are dealing with a case of unconditional surrender. If you're not dealing with a case of unconditional surrender, then you understand more or less automatically that only if a miracle happens will you achieve 100% of your objectives because in a diplomatic negotiation, and believe me, I've had my measure of experience as the chief negotiator for my country in a large number of diplomatic negotiation processes, you are a good negotiator if you can achieve more than 50%. You are not ever going to be 100%. 100% requires unconditional surrender of the other party. So let's understand that what we're dealing with here is obviously, as always, not the perfect 100% achievement of everything that we wanted to get for Christmas. This is not a perfect agreement. I think we all agree. But the perfect agreement is not doable unless you go to war and you demand as a victorious power, unconditional surrender. So I think it's a pretty important point. My second point is just very briefly that from my vantage point, trying to follow the American debate from Europe, from Berlin, I want to say two things. First, I think it's actually very good that you have in this town a thorough examination of the pros and cons and of the details and of the verification arrangements, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I am actually not so much impressed with the lack of this thorough debate in some of the European capitals, including my own. I think this is such an important agreement that it deserves thorough examination and review. There's nothing against this thorough debate. But second point, in my view, the emphasis in the debate here in the United States has to a certain extent been on uranium enrichment or not enrichment, how much enrichment. It has been often overlooked or not significantly addressed, explained that this agreement, if implemented, if implemented according to plan, will lead Iran to abandon all plans which they have either already executed or wanted to execute regarding plutonium reduction. Now, all those of you who have ever taken a course on nuclear weapons and nuclear strategy know that practically all nuclear powers existing today have found it attractive to actually not to go the uranium road, but to go down the plutonium road because it gives you a lot more bang for one and a few other things. So the abandoning plutonium, I believe, deserves a lot of attention. This is a major achievement which sometimes hasn't received sufficient attention. Last point, and I don't disagree with anything Jean-Marie has said, so I can be very brief here. I do want to underline one point he made. From the European and from my specific German point of view, from the point of view of the German political elite, this agreement is obviously not the panacea to the solution of all the ills of the Middle East or all the bad behavior of Iran in the past and present. But it does represent a hugely important opportunity and whether we can benefit from this opportunity, whether we can use it depends essentially on the acceptance and ratification of this agreement by the US. Believe me, if you, the United States, leaves us alone with a shattered agreement that is not going to be recognized, implemented itself by the US, all the possible steps forward regarding future role of Iran in the various crises spots in the region. The question of a quote unquote security architecture for the region. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Syrian tragedy, et cetera, et cetera. None of these possible opportunities can be exploited if we fall apart, if we fall apart over the implementation of the agreement. So it's not a panacea, but it is an opportunity. And let me finish by making a very serious point. I believe having served in this country repeatedly as a diplomat, including as was mentioned as ambassador, I believe that there are few political objectives more important to my country than a close and trustful transatlantic relationship. At the same time, I believe that we have had more than enough transatlantic, you know, the Snowden and NSA affairs and so on. You can see how fragile the transatlantic consensus has become when you look at the various arguments in the TTIP process, for example. So the last thing we need in the transatlantic relationship is that we fall apart over this agreement. If you believe that you have seen transatlantic crises in the past, let me tell you, you ain't seen nothing yet. If this agreement falls apart, if the European left, far left, extreme left, will love the opportunity to say, see, we knew it. The United States is an irresponsible power. It is not a good power. It is not a benevolent hegemon or leadership nation. And all those forces in France, in Germany, in other countries, all the ugly elements will come up and will have a real big, big mess, which leads me, simply to conclude, to believe that if we want to be strong as the West in confronting the multiplying crises situations in the Middle East and elsewhere, we need to stand together and we need to do this agreement together. This is important because it's about Iran, but it is far more important than just about Iran. This is about the global positioning of the West for the next decade or two. So this is really historic. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Wolfgang. You've raised the bar and you've alluded to the importance that the steel has for transatlantic relations. I'll pass the floor to Suzanne by asking, there was some mentioning of Europe in the debate over the past weeks here in Washington with regard to that particular perspective, but what is your general view of the role that Europe has played, say, ever since the agreement has been signed? How has it been viewed? Is the contribution of Europe being seen to the steel? What is the perspective that DC has on Europe for the near future? Thank you, Cornelius, and I'm very pleased to be here and honored to be on a podium with such distinguished speakers. I think I want to echo some of what's already been said because I think that it often gets downplayed or disregarded here in Washington. The critical transatlantic cooperation that produced the negotiations and the agreement is unique and historic and absolutely must be sustained and it's going to face some real challenges, but I'll leave that to potentially later in the discussion. I feel as though I'm constantly harkening back in history when it comes to the US policy toward Iran, but it is too easy to forget that for most of the past 36 years, we have been at odds with our closest allies in Europe on precisely how to deal with Iran, sometimes very fractious relationship when particular crises have emerged or when particular initiatives have been adopted on the part of the US government, and so to see the level of coordination that produced not just the agreement, not just the negotiations that proceeded it, but the strategy over the course of arguably 10 years that generated the conditions that brought about the negotiations and the agreement is extraordinary and it should be celebrated and it should be preserved. In specific answer to your question, I think that we've seen already that European diplomats have played an important role in helping to shape the debate here in Washington. You've seen a number of folks on the Hill allude to conversations with American partners in the P5 plus one, and I'm quite certain that all of those partner countries are European countries that help to inform their understanding of the value of the deal, but also the absolute permanence of the deal, at least with respect to the initial phase of implementation. That is to say, the understanding that the rest of the world and that our European allies are committed to seeing this deal forward, irrespective of what the Congress chose to do, certainly swayed the votes of a number of senators. I've said that publicly and so I think that has been an important, quiet and constructive way that we can engage with one another, and I hope to see more of it in the future. What I think is quite interesting is the fact that we didn't see the sort of controversy surrounding Iran policy over much of the past decade in Europe. So I'm not so surprised that the deal itself isn't as controversial there as it is here. I am surprised that Europe adopted some of the measures that it did, particularly in 2010 and beyond, without enormous dissension and at some substantial cost to European economies. Again, I think that that isn't fully appreciated here in Washington. We come to this problem with a slightly different historical context. For Americans and for the American political elite, there hasn't been a continuous process of negotiations with Iran. We have had intermittent diplomatic context, but we don't have an embassy. We don't have an ongoing formal diplomatic relationship. And so in effect, this deal is examined in isolation rather than in the full spectrum or continuum of 36 years of history. And so it is seen as sort of the necessity of being the Be'al Endal or a Panacea to all of the Iran problems. Compounding that is the fact that we came to the diplomacy on the Iran issue or on the Iran nuclear issue somewhat late to the game, an unfortunate decision which the Bush administration rectified in 2006 in creating and generating through cooperation with the process that the Europeans had already begun, what we now call the P5 plus one or the EU three plus three. But that of course, I think complicates some of the reaction here to the deal because what you hear in terms of the response to the deal is a debate about timelines and terms and implementation procedures. But really what you hear is a debate about the focus of the deal on the nuclear issue itself. That is in itself controversial here in Washington simply because we had the luxury of disengaging from the Iranian nuclear crisis for the first couple of years during the Bush administration. Whereas all of our European partners were there, as Jean-Marie said, from the very beginning. And so it comes almost belatedly, this sort of critica that you're hearing, particularly from Republican critics, but also Democratic critics of the deal who say why doesn't this deal address Iran's regional malfeasance? Why aren't the range of other problems, Iran's domestic treatment of its own citizens? Why aren't they incorporated in this deal? And that is simply the failure here in Washington to understand and appreciate how this process came to be and to in fact celebrate how effectively it worked despite the multiplicity of crises that emerged on the outside, on the periphery of the Iranian issue, that might very well have imploded the P5 plus one, that might very well have made these negotiations non-viable from the get-go. Instead the very close cooperation and ongoing dialogue that took place at the highest levels but all through the working levels of the negotiations enabled this process to work. And I think the real challenge now, as we see policies potentially moving in slightly different directions, those of you who heard former Secretary Clinton's speech next door earlier this morning may have a bit of a taste of what that would look like here in Washington. I think we're going to really need to work very hard to ensure that what we've achieved, what we've managed to do over the course of the past five years, is sustained even as the context changes once again. Thank you, Suzanne, and thank you for giving us the DC picture also on Europe. I'd like to move forward now into the debate. Lots of points have already been raised and we want to look at how Europe will deal with this deal basically. This is not about dissecting the deal once more. Our institutions, the International Crisis Group, Carnegie Brookings, we have all done this in writing over the past week so far. The end result, I guess, is bottom line positive. You can see the charts over here. If you cannot read them, you will understand that the top line is always about what happens if there is no deal and the bottom, the positive line is what happens with the deal. So the analysis, at least on the side of the panelists, I guess, is quite clear that this is a deal worth implementing. What we want to look at is how this can be taken forward. A few points were mentioned already, how the deal can be implemented and how the regional picture plays into this. And still, I want to do so because the deal is not yet through neither in Washington nor in Tehran, for that matter. I want to do this by picking up on some of the counterarguments and then have our panelists respond how going forward these concerns can actually be addressed. One of the recurring issues is that the deal ultimately is not implementable. Iran will cheat on it. There is no unified will among certainly the Europeans and other world powers to fully implement it. Yes, there are snapback sections, but will they ever work? So what is your sense of how both the US and the EU can work together to make this deal implementable, to say, to maybe anticipate responses to minor violations, how to frame the implementation, that this is something which gets fully implemented once it is signed off. So looking forward into the implementation phase, how do you see Europe's role there? Jean-Marie or Wolfgang, if you want to start. Well, I think first, if you want good implementation, you will need a stronger IEA. And so this will be very important that the IEA be well funded so that it has the means, the resources to do its part of the job in the whole process of verification. That's a technicality, but that's an essential one. So it shouldn't be any battle on funding IEA for the implementation. That's the first thing. I think the second is that, well, this deal, as you know, is a very detailed deal. And so it means that all the, I mean, for instance, the verification procedure is a fairly complicated one with different steps that eventually allow, as you say, for the snapback of sanctions if everything fails. And I think what you will see there is if indeed there are problems, you can go and can walk you through through the different steps of that procedure, which precisely gives you the opportunity for diplomatic engagement to sort out the problem. And if it's not sorted out, I mean, I can speak certainly for front, there is a snapback provisions where an important part of the negotiation because it was seen as very important to make sure that there would not be a possibility of a veto to bring back sanctions. That's why the mechanism has actually, in effect, been reversed. It is if you want to stop sanctions. So it's the opposite of what one would expect. And that's been, that is an essential thing. So I see the Europeans being very engaged with Iran in the technicalities of the deal. There are issues, for instance, that have been discussed like Parchin. There there has to be, you cannot second guess the IAEA. The IAEA is comfortable with the arrangement it has made with Iran. And the IAEA is run by someone who is not suspected of being in any way complacent with Iran. He has a track record of not being at all complacent. So on that, I think you will see also quite a watchful approach of the Iranians. If I may, I would want to make one comment on those charges. As you said, the top line is no deal. The bottom line is a deal. But there's another interesting aspect to those charges. What happened before the deal? And what you see is that before the deal, the period of rapid growth of centrifugeurs, of accumulation of enriched uranium is the period of escalation of sanctions. So it's when there was no, when the negotiation, when there was no negotiation. It's the period between 2007 and 2013. 2014, that is actually a period where there was a race between the sanctions and Iran trying to build as many centrifuges as possible. That was in a way the worst. And so that's also, I think, an important message in terms of thinking what is the best way to control, to lengthen the breakout period? Is it without or with negotiation? And it's not just a projection in the future that shows that it's also an analysis of what happened in the past. Thank you. Hoskan, do you wanna? Well, come on. I completely agree. Couple of points just to spell it out. First, neither the US, as I understand it, the Obama administration, nor the European co-negotiators have illusions. I made the point about this not being a panacea earlier. We share the view helped by the Obama administration that this is not to be regarded as an agreement built on mutual trust. From now on, the Iranians will behave like a normal good citizen. No, the agreement is built on extremely intrusive verification measures, et cetera, et cetera. And I want to just underline the point, this snapback mechanism is really quite an unprecedented maneuver. I was surprised, speaking personally, that Russia and China would allow in this situation their traditional veto power to be suspended, if you wish. I don't know whether that's the correct description. But in other words, this is really a significant achievement, which strengthens the credibility of the agreement. Second, very brief point, there's always the argument made, so, well, this is only about 15 years, and then what? And then they can go back and do all the bad things. Well, quite frankly, speaking again, as like Jean-Marie, as a diplomat, I've been in this business now for 40 plus years, 15 years in diplomacy is a very long time. If we didn't have this agreement for the next 15 years, I bet you Iran could be, if they so wondered, a pretty significant nuclear power. I think gaining 15 years, if the agreement is observed and implemented, is a very long time. There will have been, in the meantime, more than just one successor to President Obama. And no one knows who will be exactly in the leadership 15 years down the road on the Iranian side. That's also important to keep in mind. Final point, because of course I've been hearing these arguments, it is not true that the only purpose of the Europeans, especially the Germans, because we were the European country with the biggest trading and investment relationship, it is not true that the hidden purpose is to get back in business. Yes, many of the German companies who have had to suffer rather significant losses because of the sanctions, of course, are interested in going back into business with Tehran. But you will not see, I promise you, you will not see the German government rushing to Tehran with large commercial delegations trying to regain the lost ground overnight. Except for the one which was there. Well, two days after the deal. I'm sure there will be more delegations, not only from Germany, of course, people want to go and now it's no longer impossible or politically dangerous, but we understand, I shouldn't say we, I think the German government and other European partners understand very well that the challenge is a much broader strategic one. Again, this is this opening which the agreement offers is an opportunity. If we use it correctly, maybe we can, maybe we can engage with Iran about what kind of relationship could evolve between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Which is at the moment a difficult relationship with mutual recriminations and adversarial positions. Maybe we can, together always with the United States, make a new effort once the Iranian problem, if I can call it that, is to a certain extent neutralized to tackle the Israeli-Palestinian problem. Maybe we can over time have discussions with at least with elements of Iranian society about how this country deals with human rights and terrorism and many of the other issues that have been a problem for all of us. So, I think it's important to understand that this is going to be a long-term process that we're not talking about a few weeks or months until Iran changes. We need to consider this in terms of years, maybe many years. Let's not forget just to conclude. When you discuss this with Iranians, it happens and I'm not an expert on the Iranian culture by no means. But it has happened to me a couple of times that senior Iranian interlocutors have, in passing, made a reference to the fact that they believe that their country has been around for a couple of thousand years, whereas the United Germany has existed since 1870 and the United States a hundred years longer. This is from an Iranian point of view nothing. So there is a certain sense of pride and role and place in world history, whether we like it or not, we need to take into account as we try to deal with this. This is hopefully a new opportunity. If I may, on that one, I think what's going to make the situation tricky and where we need engagement is that I think both in Saudi Arabia and in Iran, there is a mix of great, in the case of Iran, as you say, a great sense of confidence that Iran has been around for thousands of years, and at the same time a sense of insecurity and on both sides. And that's where outside engagement will be needed, outside engagement to temper down the self-confidence and at the same time to temper down what seems contradictory, the sense of insecurity. And that requires subtle, intelligent diplomacy. Certainly diplomacy. Suzanne, is it too early to talk about implementing the deal and what Europe could do in implementing the deal? Does that interest anyone here in Washington where the debate is still more about whether the deal is good or bad? What could Europe do at this point from looking forward to the implementation? I think the debate here in Washington is moving away from the deal up or down, although there are obviously still wrinkles that could emerge along the road to full-fledged American endorsement of the deal. It doesn't appear as though the Congress can really play an obstacle at this stage in terms of its boat of disapproval. But I do think that this is when it's absolutely critical for the U.S. and Europe to in fact intensify their engagement on the issue of Iran, on the nuclear issue first and foremost, but then looking beyond the nuclear issue. On the nuclear issue narrowly, we face a challenge because effectively we've had a somewhat level playing field at least since 2010 between the U.S. and Europe. The sanctions regime wasn't quite as tight for European firms, but they were impacted by American sanctions in many cases, and there were EU measures and unilateral single-country measures that restricted their business with Iran. And so in effect it's really been the West that was forced out of Iran over the course of the past five years. That will no longer be the case. We will be back to a considerable divergence in the business opportunities which redounds to the diplomatic relationships, whether we like it or not. All of your governments will be looking to promote opportunities, facilitate those opportunities for their businesses, and that's what businesses expect of their governments. In the case of the U.S. government, the embargo will largely remain in place. There will be a few selective loopholes for aircraft and airline parts, as well as a few other areas that I'm sure the American entrepreneurial community will exploit to their fullest extent. But there will be a web of sanctions as the international crisis group has described it, a spider's web of sanctions. It very much remains intact here. And in fact I think we can anticipate that both critics of the deal, as well as sincerely minded folks on Capitol Hill who are concerned about the other aspects of the Iranian challenge around the region, are looking to find ways to up the ante in terms of economic pressure on the Revolutionary Guard and other entities that are involved with support for terrorism. None of that is actually precluded by the deal, although depending on how you read certain passages, I imagine the Iranians and potentially even the Europeans will find the passage or the implementation of new measures on the part of the United States, even if they are not related to nuclear issues, somewhat controversial. There will be a huge change in so far as there will be a disparity in the climates for diplomacy and for business between the United States and Europe. And we need to keep that transatlantic relationship as robust as it has been. For that reason I think it's incumbent upon the EU3 plus Washington to come together in a really intense fashion over the course of the next few months and talk about how snapback, under what circumstances would we look to snapback? I think we've heard policymakers suggest we're not going to snapback over every single infraction. There are differences between issues with implementation and clear violations of the deal. Where do those lines exist and can we in fact come to some common understanding so that if and as business expands that we won't have this sense that suddenly our understandings are different now and it's a result of the economic relationships. I think as part of that we also ought to have a very clear conversation about does UN Security Council snapback? If in fact UN Security Council sanctions are put back in place what does that then imply for EU sanctions because it really was the EU measures as well as individual country measures in Europe that has such a powerful impact I think both psychologically and financially on Iran perhaps more so than anything and finally this sort of de-conflicting on what exactly the United States might be doing in terms of targeting Iran's support for terrorism, whether arms supplies to Hezbollah, I mean Hillary Clinton laid out a laundry list of a kind of post deal policy for Iran which is a fairly hard hitting policy but one in which transatlantic cooperation both in terms of clarity on what the US may be doing on its own sanctions but also a clear common sense of purpose on our shared interests in seeing the crisis in Syria ameliorated in some way shape or form that those kinds of conversations should in fact intensify as we move toward the implementation of the deal. Thank you, Wolfgang, you wanted to come in. Yes, I'd like to add one specific point to this. We're having this debate more here in Washington than in Berlin so how big is the probability that the Iranians are going to try to cheat and undermine the agreement? Well, the way of helping the Iranians to start trying to undermine the agreement and to cheat is if those prevail, if those were to prevail here in Washington, D.C. who are already now preparing some poison pills to introduce into this or that legislation. This is going to make it Iran also has politics and there are going to be people who are going to try to kill the agreement. Those people exist just like they exist here and we shouldn't make it easier for the enemies of the agreement in Tehran by offering them a wonderfully easy excuse to try to sabotage the agreement. So I think it's important that both the United States and the European Union are as tough as nails as far as observing the, you know, down to the last letter that precise implementation of the agreement but let's not go overboard let's not let's not add new conditionalities I think that's not only not a good idea it will probably it will probably increase the risks significantly that the agreement could could unravel less here than in Tehran. So this is just a little warning shot. Thank you. Speaking of warning shots. I have a few more questions on my list but I also promised to bring the audience in so if there are already some questions on your side of this room there are colleagues with microphones around please raise your hand if you have a question or a comment please say who you are. If this is not the case at the moment that's fine then I'll turn to my second question I wanted to especially ask Jean Marie to explore a little bit more the regional dimension because ultimately we know this deal was not about Iran's regional activities it was a deal about the nuclear program only but you said that the deal can unravel if we don't watch closely what happens on the regional side what is it that you foresee to advise the Europeans to do in terms of promoting regional collaboration that could ultimately help preserve the deal help promote the deal. The deal has long timelines and so we need to approach it in that perspective I think it's probably and unfortunately unrealistic to expect a radical change for the good in regional relations in the last couple of years considering the completely conflicting narratives that you have in Riyadh, that you have in Tehran the notion that you can bring those narratives to some common understanding of the issues of the region that is just not going to happen any time soon but that is not a reason to give up and just to stand still waiting for things to deteriorate and there I think the number of concrete issues that need to be addressed without addressing first a kind of grand scheme of a security architecture and I completely agree there with Wolfgang that in the end that's what we should be aiming at but that security architecture is not going to come as the first step it may be a crowning achievement after years of gradually diffusing the various crises where Iran is on one side the battle line you have of course two major crises at the moment where Iran is involved one is Yemen and one is Syria Iraq in Yemen in my view it's a good thing that the Houthis have been pushed back and so there is a moment there is a window now a kind of negotiation where the coalition that supported the government should not try to overreach because if it overreaches it will eventually probably fail and will have a protracted conflict there is now an opportunity for some kind of power sharing agreement in Yemen it's not easy but that's what the UN should be supported and that's where some engagement with the Saudis, with the Iranians is important can be tested there because in the on that particular issue and so I think that that's something that clearly this administration is willing to countenance although precisely how that takes place and under what sort of a process I think is very much an open question but I do think that there is an appreciation that the Syria problem cannot be solved without dealing with the combatants and Iran is a combatant in the Syria crisis so I think we are going to have to find a mechanism for doing that Iranians of course but again we have to see what happens when the rubber hits the road and if we can actually create a constructive dialogue pushed to facilitate Iranians access to life-saving medications and medical equipment is the government of Iran in terms of the difficulties in accessing that issue of that problem just adding as someone who lived in Tehran until 2013 so experienced sanctions first hand I wouldn't only blame the Iranian government I would also blame business attitudes because if you know that a good discourse you will hoard it and you will wait until prices rise so there are lots of mechanisms which make medicine much more difficult to get Wolfgang some of the questions were addressed to you too I'll try to offer a response to the question you need to understand that there are many in Europe as I tried to say earlier a million refugees on top of what we already have maybe we should take a clear look and realize that it's all the United States fault because they were the ones who went into Iraq and started you know the the other question I would like to offer I think what is desirable is that as we look at these various crises not only the Iranian crisis but let's say our problem with Russia a country with various goals